One of the reasons I always regarded journalism as the ultimate continuing education job was what you learn about, by necessity, to cover your beat.

For me that could mean reporting on Native American arts and cultural affairs in Alaska and North Dakota, prairie populism and hockey mania on the Northern Plains, labor, race and civil rights history in NC, Tennessee and points South.

And in Winston-Salem, NC, covering the National Black Theatre Festival, I met the major figures of African American theatre, profiling the great August Wilson among many other august guests of that festival.

There was a TV movie version of this iconic play in the ’90s, and you’d be hard pressed to round up a better cast than Charles Dutton, Alfred Woodard and Courtney B. Vance.

Netflix’s “The Piano Lesson” features Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Erykah Badu and Danielle Deadwyler.

Oscar worthy? Nov. 22, we find out.